This thesis investigated reading and related skills in Chinese children learning English as a second language (ESL) in 279 Chinese twin pairs aged from 3 to 11 years. Children were tested twice, a year apart, with measures of visual word recognition, receptive vocabulary, phonological awareness, phonological memory and speech perception in both Chinese and English and Chinese tone awareness. The thesis was divided into two sections with the first section exploring the phenotypic relationships and the second section estimating the genetic and environmental influences. In the first section, the causal relationships among the five ESL skills were modelled (chapter 4) and the relationships between Chinese and ESL skills were sought (chapter 4). In section two, the univariate heritability (chapter 6), the cross-linguistic genetic overlap (chapter 7) and the stability and instability of heritability estimates (chapter 8) for all skills were examined. Findings have shown that ESL speech perception is important to the development of ESL phonological awareness, phonological memory and receptive vocabulary, in turn, has an impact on ESL reading development. Genes play an important role in ESL and Chinese reading development. The differential environmental effects may be due to the differences in the ESL and Chinese acquisition ecologies.

In this quantitative study, time controlled written English compositions by 39 Chinese university majors of English were analyzed by means of Error Analysis (EA) in order to find out what grammatical errors were made. It investigates errors made by more than one fifth of the participants, in order to see whether they can be ascribed to either interlingual or intralingual influence. An error taxonomy based on previous research was created specifically for the errors encountered in the EA. The following grammatical errors were analyzed in the error analysis: article errors, noun number errors, prepositions errors, and verb errors. The results of the error analysis showed that while Chinese learners of English make mistakes due to both interlingual and intralingual influence, the vast majority are due to interlingual influence. These findings strengthen previous notions that when the target language belongs to another language family than the L1, errors are due more often to interlingual influence (also referred to as negative transfer) than to intralingual influence. / I den här kvantitativa studien har en felanalys gjorts på tidskontrollerade engelskuppsatser skrivna av 39 kinesiska universitetsstudenter med engelska som huvudämne. Studiens syfte var att undersöka vilka typer av grammatiska fel som är vanligast. Den undersöker vilka fel som är frekventa hos studenterna och om de kan hänföras till förstaspråks- eller målspråksinterferens. En felanalys baserad på tidigare forskning utarbetades specifikt för de kategorier som påträffades i felanalysen. Följande grammatiska fel analyserades: artikelfel, fel i substantivets singular- och pluralform, prepositionsfel och verbfel. Resultaten visade att medan kinesiska studenter tenderar att göra misstag som är grundade i både förstaspråks- och målspråksinterferens, så beror de flesta felen på förstaspråksinterferens. De här resultaten styrker tidigare forskning som visar att när målspråket tillhör en annan språkfamilj än förstaspråket, uppstår felen oftare på grund av förstaspråksinterferens (även kallat negativ transfer) än av målspråksinterferens.

Second language learners of English often experience difficulties in English lexical stress perception. This has traditionally been attributed to transfer of prosodic unit or settings from their first language (L1). Similarly, the problem of Chinese learners with English stress perception was assumed to arise from tonal transfer. However, little research has been devoted to the investigation of the phonetic details of second language (L2) stress perception. The present research focuses on the perception of English lexical stress by Chinese learners of English. The purpose of this study is to reveal the use of acoustic cues in stress perception by Chinese learners of English. In the experiment, F0, duration and intensity were manipulated, each with five steps, on three disyllabic nonsense words to result in a total of 375 nonsense tokens. A group of native speakers of English (NE) and a group of Chinese learners of English (CE) participated in the study and judged whether the stress was on the first or second syllable in the test stimuli. The responses of Chinese learners of English in stress judgment were compared against the baseline of native English speakers. The statistical tests of reliance measures and logistic regression models were used in data analysis. Results indicated that, similar to NE participants, performance by CE participants showed systematic variation as a result of the manipulation of the three acoustic cues. However, CEs were different from NEs in their reliance on the three cues. CE had significantly lower duration and intensity reliance scores but significantly higher F0 than NE. In logistic regression analysis, compared to the NE group, F0 contributed most to the CE models, while the contribution of duration and intensity was minimal. It is concluded from this study that while all three cues have significant effects on stress perception for native English speakers, only F0 has a decisive effect on stress judgments by Chinese learners of English. This study reveals that, rather than transfer of tone at the phonological level, there is transfer of reliance on F0 in the acquisition of L2 English stress. It is suggested that the investigation of phonetic details of learners’ problems with L2 stress acquisition is necessary for L2 speech learning theories and also for L2 stress teaching.

Anyone who has been learning a new language knows the feeling of anxiety when facedwith the task to use it in the classroom and in real life. Foreign Language Anxiety isconcept developed by Horwitz et al. (1986) to describe and measure this specific form ofanxiety. In this study, the anxiety levels of a class of Chinese senior middle schoolstudents taking an English class have been measured. The levels were measuredaccording to the Foreign Language Anxiety Scale, developed by Horwitz et al. (1986). 59informants participated in the study. The data were analysed to find which factors invokethe most anxiety. To gather qualitative data and gain further insight, two sets of groupinterviews were performed. The results show that a majority of the students suffer fromanxiety in class. Teacher-generated anxiety seems to be the most provoking factoraccording to the analysis. / Alla som har studerat ett främmande språk känner igen den ängslan man upplever närspråket ska användas i klassrummet eller i en autentisk situation. Språkängslan införfrämmande språk är ett begrepp som utvecklats av Horwitz et al. (1986) för att beskrivaoch mäta den här specifika formen av ängslan. I den här studien har nivån av ängslan ien kinesisk högstadieklass som studerar engelska mätts. Nivån har mätts i enlighet medskalan för språkängslan i samband med undervisning i främmande språk (författarensöversättning) utvecklad av Horwitz et al. (1986). 59 informanter deltog i studien. Datananalyserades för att se vilka faktorer som framkallar mest ängslan. För att samlakvalitativ data och få djupare insyn genomfördes också två gruppintervjuer. Resultatetvisar att en majoritet av studenterna lider av ängslan i klassrummet. Lärargenereradängslan är den mest bidragande faktorn enligt analysen.